30 Days Of Isolation
by eyepennies
Summary: Harry and Pansy are on a deserted island. Are they who they think they are? More importantly, are they who the other one thinks they are?
1. prologue

_Prologue_

Pansy clicks her tongue impatiently. She's been waiting for_fucking_ -EVER in this stuffy waiting room, and that old guy sitting across from her, wearing a trench coat with mysterious stains on it, he's leering at her. And she can only see one of his hands.

She crosses and uncrosses her legs, pulling her short skirt down, watching the trench coat perv watch her do it. She checks her watch again and sighs loudly. If she doesn't get out of here soon, she won't be able to buy those new pink heels she's had her eye on. She knew she should've gone to the shoe store first! If that damn helpwitch doesn't hurry up with those stupid-

"You'll need to sign these, Ms. Parkinson."

Pansy looks up, over towards the reception window and at the helpwitch, who's holding out a pen and a thick wad of papers, and gives her a sceptical look. The helpwitch rolls her eyes and says impatiently, "They're just the standard wavers and forms, Ms. Parkinson. All trainee aurors have to sign them."

Pansy gets up from her seat, grabs the pen and papers from the witch and sits back down in the waiting room. She tongues the top of the pen and scrunches up her nose as she skims through the introduction. She flips through half of the papers, all of them written in legal mumbo-jumbo.

On the very last page, there's this whole clause, with words like... Temporary loss of freedom. Unconventional psychological testing. She ponders the importance of this for a few seconds, then scribbles a hasty signature on the bottom of the page, not even bothering to finish reading through it. Standard wavers and forms, right? And now she'll make it to the shoe store on time! To celebrate how great it is that everything just came together, time wise, she thinks she'll go see that new Brad Pitt movie too. And stock up on candy.

Her head filled with shoes, and Brad Pitt, and candy (in that order), she gets up, strolls over to the reception window (and making sure to coldly ignore Mr. Trench coat deviant perv guy as she does), slides the signed papers over the desk, and says goodbye to the helpwitch with a rarely seen, sincere smile, because she can just _feel_ that this day - it's going to be great. She just KNOWS it.

What she _doesn't_ know is that even before they sign that waver, all trainee aurors are tested on psychological strength.

As soon as they sign up as potential trainee candidates, the testing begins. It starts as someone who's hired to bother them. That noisy neighbour - he could be a field agent, testing how long it takes until you lose your temper and set a bag of dog shit on fire outside of his front door. That lady in front of you in the grocery store that doesn't put a divider between your items - field agent. The bus driver who gives you the wrong change - field agent. That old guy sitting across from you, wearing a trench coat with mysterious stains on it, and leers at you - Field agent, field agent, field agent.

Then, when you sign the waver - the real testing starts. Which is why, at the very moment Parkinson, Pansy A, walked out of that waiting room, her head filled with fancy-free thoughts of new shoes and Brad Pitt, instructions for a mission plan concerning her, and one Potter, Harry J, were being printed up.

…

_MISSION PLAN - INSTRUCTIONS_

The goal of your mission is to learn to strategize, cooperate and defend yourselves without the use of wands or magic. By learning these valuable skills, a great deal is expected to be learned about you, your abilities to follow and give instructions, which will be used as references in your future assignments.

Microphones and further instructions are included with your mission plan, in the black box. The microphones are unbreakable, water-resistant, and once turned on, must stay on. A personal GPS tracker, and a CCD camera are included in your microphones. The information derived from these devices will provide essential information for the Ministry on your progress which will be valuable to the final results of your evaluation.

For the 30 days during which you will remain isolated, the principle objective is to observe and document your progress, if any. Individual updates must take place daily, during which you will evaluate yourself and your partner. Please remember to keep your microphones on or near you at all times.  


...  



	2. part 1

30 days of isolation

DAY 1.

"I cannot fucking _believe_ this!"

Pansy Parkinson's shrill voice pierces through the already sore ears of Harry Potter, and he winces. Her hands fly out, palms toward him, and she pushes him, hard, in the middle of the chest.

"Fucker!"

He stumbles backwards, into a palm tree, and his head bounces off the trunk with a muffled thud. Closing his eyes, he steadies himself and feels the back of his head. He can feel a steady throbbing starting up, right where his skull just rendezvoused with bumpy, hard, unyielding, _painful_ wood. He turns around to glare at Pansy. She's standing in the same spot, looking completely unapologetic, with her arms crossed.

He notices that she's wearing a pink nightgown.

With white frills.

She groans.

"God, could you _be_ any more useless, Potty?"

It's hard to pull off condescension while wearing a pink frilly nightgown, but she does it brilliantly.

"Yeah, apart from that whole saving the world thing I'm supposed to do, I guess I am pretty useless."

"This is perfect. Just perfect!" she says scathingly, her arms uncrossing and falling down to her sides.

He shrugs.

...

It hasn't been a great day for Pansy Parkinson. This morning, frantic whispering outside her bedroom door woke her up. Instead of her auror preparation training kicking in and her kickass skills surfacing, her first instinct was to hide under the covers. The next thing she knew, the door burst open, a hand muffled her screaming mouth, and all she can remember after that is darkness. Then she woke up here, with Harry Potter, on the beach of a seemingly deserted island, clutching a small black box, and a few papers.

Harry rubs the back of his head gingerly.

Pansy rolls her eyes and hurls herself down in the sand, rocking her butt from side to side to make a sand butt-crater, as she flips through the papers.

Harry walks over and plops himself down in the sand next to her. Pansy throws him a dirty look, turns her back towards him and continues flipping the pages.

After the page with the mission plan, there are two Xeroxed copies of a familiar looking waver, one with her signature, and one with Harry's.

Her head aches because she hasn't had her morning coffee, and because she can feel Harry Potter breathing down her neck, trying get a glimpse of the papers. _Fucking ministry of magic,_ she thinks. They can kidnap you from your bedroom and fly you out to an island in the middle of god-knows-where, but they can't leave your a fucking thermos of black, unsweetened, tar-like coffee to get your fucking brain jumpstarted. The sun shines, hot and intrusively on her face, and she wishes it would just let up with it's incessant brightness, for just _one_ fucking second so she could think.

She rubs her sweaty face, and breathes in. The air is hot and sticky, and it doesn't feel like she's getting any fresh oxygen to her lungs. Harry Potter, however, must be, because he's unleashing great big gulps of air on the back of her neck. It's like Chinese water torture, the way every time he exhales, it feels like the amount of air is increasing, and she knows, soon she's going to lash out and smack him.

_- without the use of wands or magic._

- abilities to follow and give instructions.

Rubbing her face again, she blinks the beads of sweat, caused by a combination of heat and annoyance, out of her eyes. Harry Potter's breath is still going strong on the back of her neck.

Jesus, he's one of those loud breathers too.

_…The microphones are unbreakable, water-resistant, and once turned on, must stay on._

Tiny little things always bug the hell out of Pansy. Draco was full of nervous habits, and that bugged her to no end. He'd slurp his soup, crack his fingers and his laugh was loud and obnoxious. High-pitched, like a donkey. Ironic, then, that he turned out to be an ass.

_…30 days..  
...keep your microphones on or near you at all times. _

"30 days.." Harry mumbles into the back of her neck.

Pansy thrusts the paper at Harry and stands up. "Fuck!" she yells, stomping her bare feet in the sand like a spoiled toddler. "FUCK!"

...

In the box, with the microphones, there's a map with a red 'x' on it.

Harry spends an hour trying to figure out the map, and it's only when the sun sets that he realizes which way is east and can make any sense of it. Pansy sits a few feet away from him, refusing to help, scowling and drawing in the sand with her fingers, muttering profanities under her breath.

Neither of them have turned on their microphones yet.

As the darkness starts to creep up around them, Harry stands up. He frowns, tracing invisible lines in the air, sometimes consulting the map. He stops, facing a direction towards the dark jungle behind them. Pansy stops drawing in the sand and looks up. Without any warning, Harry starts walking away from her.

Scrambling to her feet, Pansy tilts her head toward his retreating back.

"Where are you going?"

Harry keeps walking. He picks up speed and soon Pansy can only faintly see his outline, disappearing into the thicket of trees.

"Potty!"

Pansy looks around. It's starting to get cold and the darkness is pressing on her eyeballs. She shivers and a tingle of fear runs through her spine. She's suddenly very aware that she's all alone on a beach. Unless there are crazy cannibal natives around, just watching, waiting until they separate to they can attack her and use her blood in some crazy ritualistic murder. She tries to remember if anything in that waver covered the possible event of death.

So it's between going after Potty, or having her heart ripped out by crazy jungle people wearing banana leaves.

"Potty, wait for me!"

She runs towards the place in the forest where he disappeared, stumbling in the sand and almost ripping her nightgown. Typical, the day of all days that she chose to wear a frilly old lady nightgown instead of regular PJ's (it was laundry day, ok?), would be the day that she's kidnapped by the government and placed on a deserted island with nothing else to wear.

"Pooootty!"

She topples over a tropical looking shrub right near the edge of the forest and feels a shooting pain in her ankle.

"Shit!"

Rubbing her throbbing foot, she squints into the darkness after him.

"Where are you?" she whispers into the dark forest. "Are you there?" she asks, raising her voice a little. She waits for a few seconds, but can't hear anything except for the distant rumbling of waves behind her and what sounds like crickets somewhere vaguely in front of her. But for all she knows, what she thinks sounds like cricket song could actually be the mating call of some sort of rare, four foot long poisonous jungle bug that just can't wait to get some juicy girl ass. "Potter?" she says to the dark, slightly uneasy.

She hears a rustle in front of her.

"Potter?" She's painfully aware of the high-pitched note of panic in her voice, and jumps when she sees his face looming out of the dark.

"Yeah?"

"Jesus, Potty, you scared me!"

He grins. "So we're back to 'Potty' now, are we?"

She scowls. And decides to ignore his perception by a smooth subject segue.

"What are we going to do for shelter? We can't use magic and there's no-" She stops mid-sentence, as he dangles a navy green bag in front of her.

"What's that?" she asks stupidly, pointing.

"Shelter."

"Where did you-"

He holds up a hand to stop her.

"Just follow me."

"Don't tell me what to do, asshole!" she says snottily, pushing her chin out and looking him defiantly in the eyes. He pushes past her and walks back out to the beach.

"Fine." he says. "Do whatever."

She scowls after him. Why is this the second time in ten minutes she's running after him, yelling in a totally subordinate, undignified way?

"Wait!"

She catches up to him, and he's already started unpacking the bag. He takes out a bunch of poles, some pegs and a large canopy. Pansy stands behind him, watching him as he starts to shove the poles in the sand.

"Great. You do that, while I-"

"Do nothing?"

"Will you stop interrupting me? I wasn't going to say _nothing-_"

He snorts. "Right."

"You **interrupted** me again!"

She can practically hear him smirking. Ok, she lied. She was going to say nothing.

Great.

Resignedly, she walks over to the mass of poles and pegs. She picks one up and twirls it in her hand, unsure of what to do next. Experimentally, she shoves in a random spot in the sand, unaware that Harry's stopped what he's doing and is watching her. She picks up another pole and shoves it another spot. There, that looks alright. Pretty good, actually.

"I'm just taking a wild guess here, but… you've never done this before, have you?"

She looks up at Harry.

"What, you mean menial labour? Can't say that I have."

"Shocking."

"Bite me."

…

It takes Harry about half an hour to pitch the tent. He rummages inside the bag and pulls out a blanket. He crawls inside the tent and she hears him rustling around inside there.

She walks over to the bag and peers inside. It's got some matchboxes in it, a fishing rod, and a few bottles of water.

"Where the hell is MY blanket?"

"You don't get one."

She bends over and pokes her head inside the tent. He's lying down with the blanket wrapped around him, facing the side of the tent.

"Give me the blanket," she demands.

His arm shoots out behind him, unlodging the blanket from underneath his butt and flips it out to the middle of the tent.

"Sharesies."

"No- Give me the _whole_ blanket."

He doesn't answer.

"And you can't sleep in here."

He rolls over.

"Come again?"

"Did I stutter, Potty?" She smiles, showing all of her teeth. "Give me the blanket, and get out of the tent."

He laughs and jerks his head up towards the tent ceiling. "Give _me_ a break, Parkinson."

"Are you gonna give me the blanket?"

He smirks at her and rustles his messy hair. He really needs a haircut. Big surprise there. He shrugs.

"It's doubtful."

"Fine!" She turns around and stomps off.

It's gotten cold as hell out on the beach, but this is a matter of pride. The day she sleeps in the same tent with Harry Potter, with his pale hairy legs and arms and scar and face and hair and glasses all over the place, with all that in the same vicinity as her legs and face and her other.. _gropeables_ - underneath the same blanket as him - is the same day she blasts herself into oblivion.

"Ok, Parkinson!" he yells after her. "You win! I'll give you the blanket- and the tent!"

"Fuck you, boy scout!" she yells back at him. He can keep it. He found the stupid tent, he pitched the stupid tent, he can **keep** the stupid tent.

It's dark out on beach – pitch black, and she's not paying attention to where she's going. She steps into a hole – her own stupid butt crater – with the same foot the tropical shrub killed. And she wails. Loudly. She throws herself down on the sand and rubs her ankle, hard. She keeps rubbing it, even after the pain stops. She keeps rubbing it, harder, until it stops soothing her and starts hurting her.

(Does it matter why people do things, if the outcome is the same?)

She sniffs into the darkness, and wipes her face furiously, even though there are no tears to wipe away. Life sucks right now, it really does. This was _not_ how shit was supposed to go down.

(Is it who you are or what you do that defines you?

We're all fighting for a common cause, and you can tell yourself, Potty, that you're doing it because it's right or because you're the big hero, but this is about revenge. People are only too happy to heave the burden of responsibility onto other people, so they can blame them if shit goes wrong. Well, I'm not going to sit around twiddling my thumbs. I want wrath and vengeance, biblical style. I want his blood on my hands.)

…

DAY 2.

Pansy groans in her sleep. She remembers where she is, all too quickly. A few minutes of blissful ignorance would've been nice, but impossible, since she can already identify that it's sand pressing against her cheek and arms, and as she shifts her weight, she can feel it lodged everywhere. In between her toes. In her hair. In her underwear. She opens her eyes and-

What the hell?

She realizes she's covered with something. Something warm, and fuzzy and-

What the _hell!_

…

"Fuck you, Potter."

He barely registers the words before he groggily turns his head and is hit in the face with something. Something warm, and fuzzy and-

"Don't do me any favours, asshole."

He pulls the blanket off his face and crawls to the entrance of the tent. She's limping away, holding both her hands up, flipping him off.

DAY 4.

"Dammit!"

Pansy rubs her stiff neck and winces. She stretches her arms up against the sky and feels the cricks in her back uncoil. She's kind of, maybe regretting her decision to choose pride over comfort a little now, because sleeping on the beach is bad for the posture. And her withdrawal from coffee hasn't been going exactly smooth. If you said that earlier, she threw a coconut at Potter's head because he walked past her and 'looked happy' – well, you wouldn't be totally in the wrong. And if you said that after the coconut missed him (because she throws like a girl) she launched herself at him and started hitting him – well, you wouldn't be totally in the wrong there either.

They still haven't turned on their microphones, partly because there's no progress to report, and partly because they're really fucking pissed at the ministry for pulling this on them. Well, those are Pansy's main two reasons. Potter's reasons… well, who cares about his stupid reasons?

The backaches, the coffee withdrawal, and the heat combined have also given Pansy headaches. The throbbing, behind-the-eyes, migraine, please-fucking-kill-me kind of headaches.

And now there's splashing. Why the _hell_ is there splashing?

Harry is standing in the middle of the waves, throwing the fishing rod out. He isn't wearing a shirt and the droplets from the splashing waves on his back glisten in the sunlight. He pushes up his glasses, his arms arch back, and he throws the rod out, a little further.

They've been on this island for a few days now, and even though she's been verbally and physically abusing him every chance she gets, he just shrugs it off like some kind of stupid pacifistic loser. Ok, so it's true that it was mostly him and Draco that had that whole lame arch-nemesis thing going, and, she was just around in the background to throw insults at him now and again. And true, Draco is a bastard, and she hates him now, but just because she hates Draco doesn't mean her and Potty are going to suddenly become best friends, united by their mutual hate for ferret-boy. She can have her hate-cake and eat it too, because Harry Potter annoys her, with his stupid determination to play nice with her, just because it's been years since they've really seen or spoken to each other – and, well - that's not going to happen because she doesn't play nice.

And, hot damn. Hell if Potter didn't just catch a fish.

Pansy groans to herself. It feels like ages since she had sushi. (Sweet, mouth watering sushi.)

So he annoys her. Big deal!

(Well, she wasn't in Slytherin for nothing. Self-preservation first, baby. Always looking out for numero uno.)

"Hey, Potter!"

He's trudging through the waves and onto the shore, holding the fish in one hand, the rod in the other.

She walks over to him and makes a triumphant punching gesture in the air.

"Wow, look at that… _Harry!_ You done gone and caught yourself some fish!"

He raises his eyebrows and shoves the rod into her hand.

"Stop that, before you hurt yourself, Parkinson. You can have some fish."

Right when he shoves the rod in her hand, his fingers brush against hers. And it takes a few seconds until she wipes her hand off on her nightgown.

"But that means you're sleeping in the tent tonight, cripple!"

And there's that bullshit niceness again.

… 


	3. part 2

**Author's Notes: **I was really struggling over how to write this chapter. Writing Harry doesn't really come naturally to me. He's such a paradoxical character to me. He's insensitive and confrontational, but he's nice… I want him to be good, but not a doormat and IT DOESN'T WORK. Trying to write Harry totally kicks my ass. Anyhoo, here it is.

(Oh and in case someone notices, I know that I wrote day 8 twice. That's because the part in between, with the evaluation is a flashback and I was just reaffirming that it's still at day 8.)

Part 2

…

DAY 8.

Harry Potter is not a person anymore. He's an idea, a metaphor.

He is David.

He has no hobbies. He has no friends, no enemies, not dreams or goals other than the one that was set for him by someone else a long time ago.

Harry (the person) likes pizza and hamburgers and anything made by Mrs. Weasley. He likes watching TV and playing Quidditch. He hates olives and waking up early.

When you're on a deserted island, things change.

When Harry's on a deserted island, he likes waking up early. To watch the sunrise. The clouds and colours surrounding the sun are different everyday. The myriad of light and shadows they cast on the waves make them sparkle in unison with the thousands of tiny wet corns of sand on the shore. Of course, he wouldn't put it like that. If you asked him about it, he would shrug and say, "I dunno. It looks cool."

Harry (the person) knows some things about life. He knows that it is not fair, and that it is not easy. He knows that when he was one year old, any right he ever had of being his own person was ripped away from him, and an obligation was set upon him.

Of course, he wouldn't put it like that. If you asked him about it, he would shrug and say, "I dunno. I do what I gotta do."

People may have been good at making him think he's had a lot of choices about where his life was going. The career's advice in fifth year was classic. There's no work pamphlet for saving the world and dying like a hero, so they ask him what he wasn't to be when he grows up._ (Alive?)_

So he lived his whole life on other people's terms. And he hopes that maybe if he does this thing for the world - Then maybe they can get off his back, and he can live his life. His OWN life. That is, if he doesn't die. Fingers crossed.

…

"Ok, ministry," Pansy says, holding her microphone up to her mouth. "You're really fucking hilarious. I get it. You put two opposites on an island and listen as they freak out at their situation. I bet you're just laughing your asses off, listening to us. Right, I learned my lesson, I have to be nice to Potter or I don't get any fish, which equals starvation. Big deal, I learned a skill for my future career as an auror. Because we all know that in a war type situation, I will be stuck on a deserted island with someone annoying who knows how to fish."

They've been sleeping in the tent together for four days now - tonight will be the fifth - and every night before they go to sleep, they do their evaluations. It was on the fourth night they turned them on. Really, it was Pansy who turned them on, not because they had made any progress, but – judging from the hour she spent doing it – she liked to bitch about Harry. At first he thought Pansy was just speaking to the air – lamenting or something, and it wasn't until the hard plastic of his microphone was flung across the tent and hit him in the face that he realized she turned them both on and was whining about him to the ministry.

"Parkinson, don't bitch at the ministry like that. This is supposed to be a professional evaluation, not a reality show-"

"Shut the fuck up, Potty! Did you hear that, ministry listening guys? Do you _hear_ what I have to put up with? And what the hell is a reality show? No – don't answer. I don't care."

She laughs.

"Now, where was I? Oh, right. I think you should really come get us now – or you'll have a little murder-suicide on your hands. Wait, scratch that. Just a murder, because after I throttle Potter, I'll have no reason to kill myself."

She laughs again.

"And you know, I have to do everything around here. I got the tent up."

"Uh, _we_ got the tent up."

"– That's just Potter sugar-coating it," she says loudly. "I did it. By myself. Potty's surprisingly crap at muggle stuff, considering he was raised by the filthy things and is best friends with a mudblood–"

Harry bends over towards her and yanks the microphone out of her hand. He's breathing heavily as he leans in close to her. His eyes are dark, and partly covered by his glasses, so she can't see them properly, but she'd guess they're all bulgy and crazy.

"Look, Parkinson. I don't care if you want to take credit for pitching the stupid tent, or if you want to make this difficult. But if you say one more thing about muggles, or Hermione, you'll -"

He doesn't finish the sentence.

Pansy swallows.

"Ok, Pottyyy—eer."

He raises his eyebrows.

…

DAY 8.

"This is dangerous. I'm going to get bitten by something!" Pansy wails. "And it's gonna be all your fault!"

Pansy is walking closely behind Harry, and she resists the urge to clamp on to the back of his shirt. The dark jungle is sinister and scary all around them, and she learned about ten minutes into their little jungle hike for food that it's best not to look at the forest floor, because oh yeah- that's swarming with bugs.

"We're not going to find any food! We're going to die here, and that's gonna be all your fault too-"

Suddenly, she screams and a split second after that, Harry feels her arms clamp around his neck and tries to pry them off so he can, you know, breathe.

"Pan-"

"THE- HUGE! SLIMY! And all with the slithering!"

Harry's eyes are watering from lack of oxygen, and the jungle scenery swims in front of his eyes as she pulls him in a half-circle and releases, crouching down behind him and grabbing onto his legs, using him as a human shield.

He tilts his head to look down at her, massaging his neck. "What the fuck was th-"

"LOOOOOK!" she yells, her arm shooting up, towards a tree branch some three feet to the left of them.

There, coiled on the branch, is a bright green snake, at least four feet long.

Somewhere below him, he hears Pansy whimper. He looks down and smirks.

"Isn't it a little ironic that you're scared of snakes?"

"This is NOT the time for Slytherin jokes, Potter!"

"It's _always_ time for Slytherin jokes, Parkinson."

She ignores him "Throw something at it! Or.. do something else.. manly and heroic.."

He snorts. "Manly and heroic?"

He turns his face towards the snake. At first Pansy thinks he's spitting at it or something – but then she realizes.

Oh yeah. Potty can talk to snakes.

The snake uncoils and slithers soundlessly away from them.

"There. Heroic enough for you?" Harry bends down, takes her hands in his and pulls her up to her feet. She looks at him, and he's looking at her and it occurs to her that their faces are less then a few inches apart. They stand there, looking at each other, wordlessly.

Suddenly, Harry feels the familiar sensation of her hands on his chest, pushing him violently backwards.

"Hello, lacking sense of personal space much, Potty?"

She turns around and stalks off, deeper into the jungle. "Alright, let's go hunt, kill and eat various small rodents, Potty!"

This time, where his fingers touched hers, she doesn't wipe them off at all.

…


End file.
